An old hand-painted wooden sign at the end of a dusty vineyard track, the Cape

Wine Education21 October 20264 min read

Does Pinotage taste of burnt rubber? Chocoholic says no

By South African Wines

Pinotage has a reputation for rubber and nail-polish remover. Darling Cellars' Chocoholic, made from nothing but Pinotage, is a fair test of whether that reputation holds.

Pinotage carries a reputation for smelling of burnt rubber, or of the acetone in nail-polish remover, and plenty of UK wine drinkers pass the grape by on that basis alone. Chocoholic Pinotage by Darling Cellars is a useful bottle to test the idea against, because it is 100% Pinotage with no other grape blended in to soften the result.

In this bottle the leading flavours are dark cherry and chocolate, with vanilla and butterscotch from time on oak. Nothing in that list resembles a tyre or a nail bar. The reputation came from somewhere, though, and deserves a fair hearing first.

Where the burnt rubber idea comes from

Smoky, rubbery and sharp solvent smells do turn up in some red wines, Pinotage among them, and once you have met one in a glass it is hard to forget. A grape that most British drinkers try only now and then gets judged on the handful of bottles they remember, so one harsh example can colour their view of the whole grape for years.

The flavour of any red depends heavily on where the vines grow and on the choices made at harvest and in the cellar. That gives a producer plenty of room to steer a Pinotage towards very different results. A sceptic should judge a bottle on what it has been steered towards, and Chocoholic has been pushed hard towards ripe fruit and sweetness of flavour.

What 100% Pinotage tastes like in this glass

The fruit is dark cherry, picked when ripe and generous, with a brighter cherry note on top. That brightness comes from the vineyard's position near the Atlantic, where cool ocean air reaches the Darling hills on warm afternoons and keeps the grapes fresh while they ripen.

Around the cherry sits chocolate, the note the wine is named for, along with vanilla and butterscotch from the oak. The texture is soft and plush. Tannin, the drying grip you feel on your gums from red wine, is supple here, so the wine feels smooth from the first sip to the finish.

A rubbery or solvent edge is usually obvious as soon as you lift the glass. Smell this one before you taste it and you will find cherry and cocoa, which is the quickest way to settle the argument for yourself.

How the cellar steers it

Darling Cellars makes this wine in two parts. For around a tenth of the crop, the stalks are twisted while the bunches are still on the vine, which cuts off the supply of water and lets the grapes shrivel towards raisins in the sun. That portion brings a dried-fruit sweetness of flavour and a sense of richness.

More from the Journal

Three glasses of wine in a loose row on a weathered wooden table on a shaded stoep, Swartland

Buying Guides

Red South African wine: four bottles we would pick

19 October 2026 · 4 min read

The rest of the Pinotage ferments on its skins for five to six days at warm temperatures, long enough to draw out deep colour and soft tannin. The two parts are then blended together. A portion of the wine spends eight to twelve months in contact with oak staves, long planks of oak that add vanilla and butterscotch, and that portion is where those flavours in the glass come from.

The vineyards matter as much as the cellar. These are bush vines, grown as free-standing low shrubs without trellis wires, on slopes of deep decomposed granite that drains quickly. They are farmed dry, with no irrigation, so the roots go deep for water and the berries stay small and concentrated. Grapes are drawn from several blocks across the Darling hills, which evens out the differences between years and keeps each release soft and ripe.

Chocoholic Pinotage by Darling Cellars in the vineyards of South Africa, the story Chocoholic Pinotage by Darling Cellars in the vineyards of South Africa, the story

Putting it to the test at home

Serve it lightly cooled, at sixteen to eighteen degrees, in a large red-wine glass that gives the cherry and chocolate room. Drink it young: it is at its best on release and for two to four years afterwards, when the cherry is at full strength, and keeping it longer gains nothing.

For food, a char-grilled peppered sirloin is the strongest match, because the black pepper and charred crust sit well against the ripe cherry. A beef and tomato ragu over pappardelle works for a weeknight. The sweetness of flavour also lets it go with a dark chocolate fondant, a pudding that flattens most dry reds.

If you are wary of the grape, start with this one. Drinkers who prefer a drier, more savoury red can look through our South African red wines or read more about the Pinotage grape and its range of styles. Our guide to red South African wine covers four more bottles worth trying alongside it.

Before the main course goes on, pour a glass of Darling Cellars' Chocoholic and smell it on its own, so the burnt rubber question is answered before any food reaches the table. Keep a second glass back for the dark chocolate fondant, where the wine's cherry and cocoa sit against the bitter edge of the chocolate.